Engineers and managers involved in major software development projects may be based in different areas all over the world, spanning many time zones. In addition, the language used by different members and/or teams involved in a project, and the relevance and significance of certain actions and milestones being accomplished (or not) may differ between different members of the team, and between different participants having different roles, such as software developers, product managers, quality assurance engineers, etc. The sheer volume of messages may tend to overwhelm recipients and may result in the importance of a particular communication not being recognized by a recipient. These factors present many challenges with respect to the timely and effective dissemination and consumption of relevant information.
Various tools may be used in a software development project. Examples include without limitation communication tools (Email, IM, etc.); project management tools (JIRA, Pivotal Tracker, etc.); code repositories (P4, SVN, Github, e.g.); code review tools (e.g., Fisheye); test and test case management tools (e.g., TestRail); and release engineering tools (e.g., Pulse, Hudson, FeedbackCentral). Typically, these tools have limited notification functionality, and typically teams only use such functionality to generate communications to be sent by email, due to limitations on the ability to integrate the notification and communication functionalities of the various tools being used and also security considerations. In addition, receipt of email may require connectivity to a particular network and/or in a particular way, such as VPN, which may not be available at all times, resulting in less timely delivery and receipt of information.